members who were connected with other left youth organizations, such as the Student League for Industrial Democracy. Decline in the late 1930s A bitter struggle between the rivaling factions appeared during the late 1930s within the mother party, between the revolutionary socialist "Militants" and an electorally-oriented "Old Guard." Young, energetic, and brash, the YPSL branches seem to have almost universally been drawn to the Militant faction, bringing some branches into conflict with the Locals of the adult party with which they were nominally associated. The New York YPSL found themselves locked out of their office and blackballed from membership in the adult party by the Old Guard-dominated New York State Committee in early 1935 when they refused to support the weekly newspaper of the Old Guard, The New Leader. A complaint was filed and the matter was brought before the national executive committee for judgment at its March 23–24, 1935, session held in Buffalo, New York. The NEC instructed the New York State Committee to adhere to the national constitution of the SPA, which called for the admission of YPSL members of 2 years good standing. Six weeks were given for compliance. In 1936, an influx of Trotskyist members into the adult tilted the YPSL's ideological direction to the left, with National Secretary Ernest Erber particularly supportive of the new radical trend. Several hundred members of the Trotskyist Spartacus Youth League joined the YPSL as part of a mass entry into the Socialist Party known among the Trotskyists as the "French Turn." The Trotskyists were expelled en masse in 1937, but many young activists exited the YPSL with them during the acrimonious split. In 1936, the party turned its attention towards campus, creating the National Student Committee (NSC). The organization never drew many members, many speculating because of its ties with the Socialist Party of America or because of YPSL's factionalism. The only strength YPSL had with the campus movement, was through more sophisticated members who had earned high ranks within other student organizations, such as the American Youth Congress (AYC) and the American Student Union (ASU). With the ever-growing YCL, YPSL help founding the Youth Committee Against War (YCAW), which became an organization in which YPSL members voiced their politics about the peace movement. While ultimately did not lead to much more support, which would have been seen as one of socialisms biggest failures in the United States, to